The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
A password is a commonly used starting point for an encryption key. Since a password is typically familiar to a user and will not change in the immediate future, it can be hashed and stored on a medium to essentially hide it in plain sight. The amount of entropy in a password can be very low if the password is not of significant complexity and length. While one can simply increase the length and complexity of a password to increase its entropy, the tradeoff is that longer and more complex passwords are harder to remember. Hence, people typically choose simpler passwords which are easily cracked.